Chapter 3

I was a happy child in a middle-class family. I had no siblings, other aunts and uncles, or grandparents, not that I needed such attention. Instead, I found a love for film and acting. Who didn’t want to be Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones movies or Bruce Willis in his Die Hardadventures? Because my Uncle Charlie worked in editing at Rotunda Films, and he promised to get me a role in one of their films, I got my first big acting job at fifteen in a movie called Wonder This. I played Franklin Wonder, the emotionally imbalanced son of the newly-divorced Nathan Wonder. I wasn’t a lead character, but I showed that I could act, which got me more jobs. Seven films, a slew of commercials, and eight years later, I’d learned and acquired a few things: I hated Hollywood and its rats called producers; I never wanted to be a fake Hollywood type; I had an astronomical bank account; and I was obsessed with Oklahoma, particularly Stockton County and its cowboys.